Richard's Lot
by espritduo
Summary: My  very old  take on the writing exercise prompted by Stephen King in his book, On Writing.  Yes, this story actually is based on the book "On Writing", even though it seems little else here is!  I've tried to emulate King's style as best I can. Enjoy!


**Richard's Lot**

"God, I'm tired."

It was another one of those days for Dick. Little Nell was happily burbling away at the daycare center and he had a few hours of quiet time to catch up on some much needed sleep. This house was the only safe haven he had from the hectic schedule of the office and his own personal rat-infested daycare center he called home. This was a nice home. A little lonely, but that's just what he needed sometimes. Sometimes he really thought about just up and buying it. The bad memories kept him from really going all the way every time. _She_ had lived here. Not anymore, but her scent still lingered here, even now, he thought. That perfume. Chanelle number something or other. What number was it? The smell was right there it seemed, lurking in ever dark corner of the house...what number had she worn...?

"Ugh, stop it, Dick. She's gone. _Gone._" he said to no one in particular.

"Not quite as gone as you'd like, I bet," no one in particular answered.

Dick spun around just in time to get a good scratch across the face with finely manicured nails that had long since been manicured by anything but rusty prison bars.

"Hello, Dick. Miss me?" Jane said with an evil grin that had seduced him many times in the past.

"Not in the slightest," he countered with a casualness his throbbing temple and clenching gut felt not one bit. He wiped away the blood that was slowly trickling from his face with the back of his hand and slicked it against the sides of his less-than-new business suit. "What do you want, Jane?"

He knew what she wanted. She wanted Nell. She had always wanted Nell, even before there was a Nell. That's the only reason he survived as long as he did. She needed a man, a stupid, sexually-frustrated man who'd go along with her straight to the gates of hell and back without a word. And Dick was just that dick.

"Where is she, lovely? I want to see my precious little Nellie." She licked her fingers, relishing the sweet coppery taste in her mouth of her husband's blood. It was a familiar taste, a _sexual_ taste. Her pulse quickened.

Dick tried to remain calm. She couldn't see him agitated. He knew it only got her more excited, and when she got excited, the blood flowed. God, how could he have let this she-demon get so far into his life, and for so long? Stupid, stupid Dick.

"I'm only going to tell you to leave once, Jane. I'm calling the cops after that." Fat good that would do. He'd done this before, right in this very hallway. The cops were too lazy and inattentive to keep a creature like her locked up for long. He wondered how many she'd killed on her way out.

"The cops...oh they know where I'm at, and they'll never make it here in time. Not to stop what I have in mind. Now, where's my little baby? I want to see her, hold her, _kissssss_ her." She was practically cooing now, humming to herself in a way that reminded Dick of the loving mother he thought she'd turned into three years ago when Little Nell was born. Stupid, stupid, Dick.

"She's where you'll never find her. You'll never see that child again. Get out of my house this instant, you bitch." He knew he had said the wrong thing as soon as it slipped from his dry and sticky mouth. There was no stopping her rage now.

"YOUR HOUSE? _YOUR HOUSE? How dare you_!" And that was that. She was on him just like she had been on so many heated nights. Yes, there was a strong sense of sexuality here, but sexuality in the way that a female mantis rips the head off of her still thrusting male partner.

He tried one last attempt to push her back out the door, but it was too late. Her feral strength knocked him flat on the floor, and her unnaturally strong arms had him pinned in seconds. Then the biting began.

He tried to block it out. He had before, many times, afterall. This was how it always went. She pinned him, and then she feasted. The psychologists who had fawned over her like some weird alien corpse called it "vampiric transference" whatever the hell that was. All he knew is that she was drinking his blood. _Drinking it._ And enjoying every last sweet morsel.

Every drop that flowed from his neck she sucked dry before it had a chance to trickle away. Her honed fangs dug into him like sharpened pencil points. Digging, twisting, thrusting. There was no doubt who was in control here, and it wasn't Dick. Or Jane. The quacks up at Arkam said in this state she reverted to the mindset of pure animal instinct. Fools, all of them. This was pure evil he was fighting against here, and it took him seven long years to realize it.

He had enjoyed the kinkiness of it at first. He'd heard of blood-drinking fetishes, of course, and in the beginning it was kind of exhilarating. But night after night, it got old. And dangerous. The puncture wounds that always disappeared by morning only made him look crazier as he told the doctors of his constant lack of energy. He had told them, all of them, and they didn't believe him, dammit. Even with the evidence right in front of them behind a glass barrier at Arkam, they didn't believe him. Who would? Vampiric transference, they said. Blah.

"Do you like it, my lovely?" Jane said between her nosedives into his neck.

"...Yes...always...my love," Dick replied with a sense of helpless revulsion. It was true, he loved it, had grown to need these "sessions" it seemed. There was no point even struggling now. She would have her fill, and be on her way. To Nellie. Stupid Dick. Poor Richard. Poor, sweet, helpless little Nell...

"_NO!_" Dick roared out at Jane. He forced her mouth away from his neck, ripping bits of flesh and gore away from the wound that would be gone by tomorrow. She tumbled to his side, shocked at his sudden role-reversal. He pushed her aside and quickly got up, the sexual energy still flowing through his veins. He was powerful, he just had to believe. Let this bitch's own energy be her downfall.

"You may have me, but you'll never have Nellie. She's mine. _Forever._" Dick said without any emotion. There was power in his voice, however, and Jane felt it.

She got up, licking the blood off her still exposed fangs with pure bliss. So the runt has a spine after all. Who'd have thought? She'll just have to rip it out of him, then.

"Oh, but you know who's she really is. What she really is. She was mine the moment she was conceived. And soon, you will be mine, completely. Come to me, Richard, my lovely. Embrace your wife." She stepped with grace at first, but after a few short-lived attempts at controlled motion, she was lunging at him like a bat out of hell.

"Not this time, Jane!" he said, the power growing.

Dick leaped to the side with a strange agility he had not known for years, not since she had been inside him. Yes, use it, use her energy against her. This is your chance to get back at her for all the lies and deception. Don't waste it now.

"Graaaagh, get back here, you little beast! I'm the one with the power. I am in control!" She flailed back towards him, not caring about wasting blood now. He would be nothing but ground meat when she was done clawing through his hide.

"This is almost too easy, Jane. What's wrong, bat got your tongue?" Dick said as he once again moved aside from her. He leaped up and away from her, sailing down the hallway with supernatural ease. If he could just make it to that room. That _special_ room.

"Come back! Eeeeeeeee!" She screeched, no longer hiding the fury in her voice. She made one calculated pounce across the hallway, and she had him at the foot of the stairs.

She attempted to return to her former position of domination, but Dick was no longer giving in to her savage seductions, as powerful as they still were over him. Nell must live through this, even if he didn't.

"Never again, Jane. Do you hear me? _Never again._" He rolled over, and forced her beneath him, a position that felt both alien and somehow right at the same time. This is how it should have been from the start.

He pushed her down, the power flowing through him uncontrollable now. Before he could even realize what he was doing, he bit down. Hard. The taste was exquisite, the gratification instantaneous. Warmth filled his mouth and flowed through him, empowering him even more. There was nothing Jane could do but watch in silent gagging horror as the dominatrix was dominated and her own life drained from her.

Before he could finish his gruesome meal, he pulled out and stared into the wild-eyed woman prostrate under him. In that instant, his mind snapped back into place. He was himself for one brief moment while the initial surge of blood ceased and the shock of what he had just done hit home.

_NO! Stop this, Dick! This isn't you, it's her. HER! Get away, get away..._

That moment was all it took. He grabbed her and pushed her down against the ground as hard as he could, ignoring her cries of outrage and pain as he heard bones snapping. What bones, he didn't care. This bitch was going to die.

He picked up her limp body and carried her effortlessly up the stairs. The room was up here, two doors down, on the left. He remembered. It was _his _room. The one room in the house that belonged solely to him. She could never enter it. It had been his safehouse, his special place during the stormier parts of their already cyclonic relationship. She could not enter it unbidden as much as she would have liked to. This time she would, though. For the first and last time.

"Where...ah...where are you taking me...?" Jane said.

"To your final resting place, my lovely." Dick replied. He kept walking.

"No! No, no, no, no, noooooo! Leave me be, let _go_ of meeeee!" she cried out. It was no use, he had broken her arms and legs. She was completely his now. It wouldn't be long before he broke the rest of her. She began to whimper like a dying dog, and continued even as Dick elbowed her to be silent.

He grunted as he tossed her to the floor outside his room, and carefully opened the dust-covered door. A strong beam of sunlight hit him from the large ornate stained-glass window at the end of the room and he winced in pain. He knew what that pain meant, and some of his confidence left him. Still, he would see this to the end. All the way.

It had been years since he had needed to enter this room. Nellie had been all the protection he needed once she was born. Something about being her father, about Nell being partially his had kept her from harm, and, for a time, kept him from harm too. Jane never dared to act out against Dick in innocent little Nell's presence, and now Dick suspected she couldn't even if she tried, not while he was alive. Nell was _his_. He knew this now. Nell was his special place as surely as this room was before her birth. He had no reason to ever fear for her again once this was over. He had no reason to fear anything now. Jane was going to burn. Burn, my lovely.

"Time to go, Jane. Up you go." He heaved her over his shoulders like a sack of fertilizer, then swung her into the middle of the room. The effect was almost immediate. She had time to let out a quick "Eek!" before she was consumed in flames. She writhed and squirmed on the floor, a pattern of sunlight in the shape of a large cross silhouetted around her burning body.

She was dead before Dick could even shut the door behind him. He didn't look back. He didn't need to. The room had done its job. He could smell the burnt flesh of her corpse roasting behind him. Suddenly, it came to him.

"Chanelle Number Five," he whispered to no one in particular.

Now there was only one thing left to do. He gathered the remaining strands of dark energy imparted to him by her and ran to the garage. She would burn. _Burn._

He took an old rusty gasoline canister, still full and unused, and applied copious amounts around the hallway outside his special room. He couldn't go in there now. Never again could he see that light. He knew that now. He continued to pour the gasoline around the hallway, down the stairs, across the living room, and into the kitchen. It ran out here, but that was fine. Everything would be fine now.

The sunroof in the middle of the kitchen would do nicely. He shook the can to get the last remaining drops of the slick death trail to their destination, then threw the can aside. It clanged off the refrigerator, leaving a dent. The power, God he would miss this power.

He took a match out from his coat pocket without even thinking, then laughed. It was a grim laugh, his last. He didn't need this, and he knew it. He tossed the unlit match aside and stepped into the light. Unafraid.


End file.
